Choosing a Direction for Research
I originally wanted to explore in the area of XR (AR/VR), but I had already made a VR game at term 2, so that idea was put to rest. After browsing through the mini briefs reference given by David, I listed a few directions of interest.
- A two-player co-op or confrontation game in the thief genre that uses sound to play. Player A cannot look at the screen but can use his voice to send commands to control NPCs in the game, e.g. guards, organs, to stop Player B from acting. And player B will make different noises when he acts to indicate the current game situation of player A.
- Machine learning based AI.
- Shaders.
- Roguelike like The Binding of Isaac, containing procedurally generated dungeons. Emphasis on the replayability of the game.
Specifically, I want to learn how to use the Unreal Engine in preparation for my future job search.
Since Hanyu has a lot of experience in using the Unreal Engine, we decided to collaborate. Initially, we set out in two directions: one was to use the AI learning plugin that comes with the Unreal Engine to do machine learning, sample learning. I expected to be able to train the AI so that it could simulate the player’s actions and thus replicate the player’s behaviour in the game, and thus give the player the feeling of playing against themselves at all times and the level of difficulty that matches their own level of play. Such a goal is obviously impossible to achieve in just a few weeks and with the equipment and numbers available.
Therefore, we set our sights on something more realistic – a roguelike with an emphasis on replayability, diverse monster AI, multiple attack modes and effects, and rich dungeon generation (preferably procedurally based).
Defining the Theme Style
This week we discussed the art style we needed to adopt for the game and Low-poly became our first choice as it allows for easy level building in preparation for procedural generation. It also makes it easier to improve on the modeling.
We, therefore, opted for the low-poly style.
Setting up a Cloud-based Collaboration Server
I learnt how to use Helix Visual Client (P4V) to upload and sync Unreal projects. Compared to Unity collaborate, P4V has much clearer and less error-prone control over versioning.
Next Week
We will start building the basic mechanisms in Unreal Engine, and discuss the specific gameplay of the game.